BGA Newsletter 330 September 2025

FROM THE EDITOR

This issue, and previous newsletters, will be found in the Newsletter Archive in the Members' Area. New: we are adding clickable links to the images so that they can be viewed full size. Full-size images from past Newsletters may be found via the BGA All News pages.

Contributions are always welcome, both from our members and others. We ask that they be Go-related and "newsy". The place for debate and general discussion is the BGA open mailing list Gotalk. However, an introduction to a new topic is fine in the Newsletter. A brief introduction to Gotalk, with a link for joining, is on the BGA page Go on the Internet.

Instructions for Contributors: Please use plain, text not file-attachments. Keep it fairly brief, and give web-links and contact details. It's good to include pictures. If they are on the internet, send me the URL, otherwise attach the picture files to your email. Send your contribution to newsletter@britgo.org to arrive by the first day of the month.

Jil Segerman

NEWS

BGA Tournament Winners

Full results here.
Manchester - Yuhang Xing
Mind Sports Olympiad - Bende Barcza
Newcastle - Xuanqi Cui

British Go Congress

The British Congress returned to Edinburgh in April 2025 after 15 years, this time hosted by the New Melville Bridge Club. Fifty-seven players, matching last year’s turnout, gathered to make up one of the strongest player fields in recent memory.

The Congress kicked off on Friday night with the traditional British Lightning Championship. Twenty-six players were split into six round-robin groups, battling fiercely for a place in the top 12 knockout bracket. Details of all match-ups here.

The tough competition continued through the weekend, with the bar for the British Open set at 5d. Quan Wan (7d, Manchester) claimed the title of British Open Champion, narrowly beating Yaoling Yang. A special mention goes to Chenhe Yuan (5d), the reigning British Youth Open Champion, for his impressive victory over Dohyup Kim in the final round. Links to full results and photo gallery

Also finishing with five wins were Daniele Gentili (5k), John Armitage (9k Lancaster), and William Lindved (11k Edinburgh), each of whom bagged a giant Easter egg for their efforts. Six remaining Easter eggs were raffled off to enthusiastic applause.

Finally, for the third time running, Peikai Xue was awarded the Terry Stacey Trophy for achieving the most above-bar wins across the past year.

The First Manchester Open

The first Manchester Open was held at the Luther King House, nestled in a peaceful, tree-lined suburb just a short distance from the vibrant heart of Manchester.

A total of 48 players joined this inaugural event, with strengths ranging from 25k to 6d. First place went to Yuhang Xing (6d): three players Tik Wai Cheung (5d), Peikai Xue (4d) and Zhan Shi (3d) ended with identical MMS and SOSOS scores ands tied for second place.

Ezreal Yang (12k, Manchester) won a trophy and prize in the under-16 category. Also on three wins were Martin Harvey (6k, Manchester) and Caleb Tin Nam Fai (16k, Leeds). The “Furthest Traveller” award went to Kwun Yin Ng (2d), who journeyed around 200 miles from London to take part. The winners are shown in the photo above. Results.

Peikai Xue, a familiar face at tournaments and winner of many trophies over the years, is sadly concluding his university studies and will be flying back to China immediately after the event. He will be fondly remembered for his contributions to the Go community.

"It was a successful and memorable tournament — full of laughter, good games, and great company," reported organiser Yangran Zhang.

Annual Youth Camp

The eighth annual youth camp was attended by six boys 5k to 20k and aged 8 to 14, three from Cambridge and three from the Oxford area. As usual the PGL centre at Caythorpe Court in Lincolnshire was the venue and as well as Go lessons and playing, the youngsters were able to enjoy giant swing, high wires, orienteering, paddle boarding, aeroball and zip wire. The Go-teachers this year were again Helen Harvey and Tony Atkins.

Winner of the camp handicap tournament was Jed Lau, winners of the Pair Go were Jed Lau and Jin Cheng and the 13x13 winner was also Jed Lau, joint with Jin Cheng.

Pictures of the Go and physical activities can be seen in the Gallery.

Youngest Ever MSO Go Winner

The 29th Mind Sports Olympiad (MSO) took place in its regular venue of the JW3 centre in London. As usual many games fans from around the world came to play a very varied list of games and compete to be Pentamind Champion (Natasha Regan was the Women's Pentamind runner up). Details of all MSO results are on the MSO Database.

The Go Open was held on the final day, the August Bank Holiday Monday. 16 players took part, including five juniors and two players at 25k. The Gold medal went to Bende Barcza (4d Hungary), shown above, who at just 11 became the youngest ever MSO Go medal winner. The Silver went to Paco Garcia de la Banda (2d Spain) on tie-break from Scott Cobbold (4d Cambridge Uni) who took the Bronze. The junior medals went to Benda Barcza, Chun-Yin Ng and Eden Ng. Special mention went to the two young brothers from Leeds, Caleb and Joshua Fai, who both won three in the handicap section. Go Open Results

ADMIN

2028 European Congress

From Colin Williams, President:

As mentioned in last month's Newsletter, we are likely to submit a bid at the 2026 EGF AGM to host the event in 2028.

A planning committee has been established consisting of Alison Bexfield, Toby Manning, Matt Marsh, Alexander Rix, Francis Roads and Colin Williams.

An initial meeting was held on September 2nd which identified a number of key actions. A meeting with the EGF President-Elect, Manja Marz, will be scheduled as soon as possible to start agreeing the organisational responsibilities for the event.

British Go Journal 212, Summer 2025

The latest edition is now available as a pdf in the Members' Area on the BGA website. You will need to be logged-in as a Member to access the Members' Area and Journal files.
* Member's Access page to login
* Members' Area
* Journal web page
* sgf files, including the problems, for this edition
The three previous Journals are also available in the Members' Area.

CONTENTS
EDITORIAL
LETTERS
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Colin Williams
BRITISH GO CHAMPIONSHIP 2025 Damen Woo
WORLD NEWS Tony Atkins
WORLD AMATEUR GO CHAMPIONSHIP 2025 Alistair Wall
UK NEWS Tony Atkins
FASCINATING TSUMEGO: PART THREE Richard Hunter
YOUTH NEWS Tony Atkins
TOURNAMENT HISTORIES XXV: BRITISH EUROPEANS Tony Atkins
SOLUTIONS TO THE JOURNAL PROBLEMS
ASSOCIATION CONTACT INFORMATION

Logo Competition Result

Sam Bithell writes:

Voting closed for the BGA's logo competition on the 31st July, and results have now been tallied and verified with the membership secretary. An anonymised version of the results is available here. We would like to thank all those who entered from the start, and congratulate the shortlisted entries on their wonderful and varied designs! In the end, we received 60 votes with people ranking their choices from the shortlist from 1st to 6th, according to the instant-runoff voting method.

The end result is that entry number 2, by Joel Barrett, won by a healthy margin of 17 votes (38 votes against the 2nd place 21) after 3 rounds (although in the lead from round 1), congratulations to Joel!

We have now begun the process of redesigning various media to fit with the new logo and its aesthetic, and will be working with Joel to implement the changes according to his design. There's no fixed time limit for this, but hopefully things will take more shape in the coming months.

Congratulations again to Joel, and thanks to all those who submitted entries and engaged with the process from the start!

EVENTS COMING SOON

This Month: Nottingham, Confucius Cup (Dublin), Swindon
October: Sheffield, European Students' (Durham), Wessex (Bath)
November: Bar Low (London), Three Peaks (Yorkshire), British Youth (Nottingham), Northern (Cheadle Hulme)
December: Edinburgh Christmas, T Mark Hall Rapid (London), London Open